


Son of Rusalka

by Anomalee



Category: Deus Ex (Video Games), Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Genre: Augmentation, Gen, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-29
Updated: 2017-01-10
Packaged: 2018-09-13 02:09:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9101683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anomalee/pseuds/Anomalee
Summary: Something happened to Adam in the time between when he made his choice in the broadcast room at the bottom of Panchaea and when he woke up about a year later in the WHO run rehabilitation centre in Alaska. The harder he tries to remember, the fuzzier things seem to get, but this is that story.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This started as my (unfinished) NaNo project for this year, and I felt the need to write it to try to process everything new I had found out about Jensen and what happened after reading Black Light and playing Mankind Divided - it only left me with more questions about my favourite protragonist. Needless to say, it is expected that the reader has played HR, MD, and has read Black Light to get the most out of this, and spoilers can be expected. It's a work in progress.

Eliza's words lingered in his mind, only to be replaced by a low rumble that split into thunderous explosions as the steel and cement that formed Panchaea began to shudder and crack apart around and above him.

Adam was suddenly keenly aware of just how far below the surface of the ocean he was. He had the overwhelming urge to get out, to be anywhere but the small control room. Adam slid down against the wall, wounded and exhausted from his ordeal against Zhao and the Hyron Project computer in the previous room. Looking up at the monitors by the control panel he saw video from the surface of the structure of Panchaea beginning to collapse in on itself.

"Eliza...." Adam began. He hoped she was still listening.

"There is no way out Adam." Eliza responded, cutting Adam off before he was able to complete his thought, "You would not make it to the elevator, and besides, it is no longer functioning." Her usual matter-of-fact tone was strangely comforting to Adam. The small room he was in shuddered violently and the cries of Panchaea grew louder. "You have done all you can. I will not leave you Adam." Eliza added, as if she sensed the panic he was struggling hard to keep in check; to keep hidden behind his regular stoic expression. It was difficult for him to maintain.

Adam lowered his head to his hands and heaved a sigh of defeat. He was silent a moment as the sounds of destruction washed around him. Adam looked up again at the screens. Water had begun to pour into the giant chasm that had been at the heart of Panchaea - stretching to the floor of the ocean. He was at the bottom of that pit. Adam swallowed hard and opened his mouth to say something but as he did the room lurched sickeningly to one side and with a thundering roar the door burst open, the wall cracked apart, and Adam found himself sucked into an icy black void.

As the frigid water surrounded Adam he struggled to keep his breath and stay conscious. His rebreather kicked in, the aug extending his ability to be underwater - but only minimally in such extreme conditions. Adam pulled with his arms and kicked as hard as he could to try to move himself towards where he thought the surface was. He was suddenly pulled upwards by the invisible hand of the currents caused by the disaster filling in the chasm of Panchaea. The sea tossed him towards the surface and he found himself bubbling to the top of the centre of what had been the giant structure amongst debris and the corpses of other, less fortunate individuals - most of whom were augmented.

Adam let out a ragged gasp as he hit the surface, the cold arctic air stinging his lungs. He sent an arm flailing for a nearby piece of floating debris. Grasping it roughly he pulled himself towards it, a slick sheet of ice forming on his augmented arms as they clung to the flotsam. He began to shiver violently. He stared, wide-eyed at the carnage around him and in the distance he thought he heard voices... a voice?

"Adam. Adam! Please listen, Adam" It was Eliza, she was still there. Over his infolink. 

"Eliza?" he chattered.

"Adam. You are alive. Please stay with me. Please hang on. I am looking for help." She almost sounded desperate.

"Eliza" His words were beginning to slur. He had to think hard to put together what he wanted to say. "I am trying but... but... so cold." His head lolled forwards before jerking back up.

"Please Adam."

Adam was silent a few minutes more, struggling more and more to keep himself conscious until "Sorry Eliza".

His grip on the flotsam finally gave way and he slipped down into the blackness of the ocean again. As Adam disappeared below the icy waves the last of his breath left him. The cutting edge lenses that were his eyes were turned up towards the surface upon which the dying light danced. One sleek black hand reached towards that shimmering boundary between life and death briefly before going limp with slow gracefulness in the water along with the rest of his body. Deep inside Adam's body, his Sentinel aug kicked in, doing what it needed to do to keep Adam Jensen alive enough that he could be brought back from the edge of oblivion.


	2. Chapter 2

It had been over a week since the rescue operation for Panchaea had ended. A small number of survivors had been recovered, mostly augmented workers from the project; battered, broken, and bewildered after having control of their minds and bodies seized from them in what was now being coined The Incident on Picus newscasts around the clock. These survivors had been dispersed amongst a number of temporary rehabilitation camps that were promptly established to deal with not only what happened at Panchaea, but all over the world after the Incident. The operation was transitioning to one of asset recovery and as the first aid and other NGO orgs left the site a private team moved into their place to handle the salvage operation. 

"The area has already been charted out in a grid, here" An almost bald man with military-grade Tai Yong arm and leg cybernetic prostheses was gesticulating at an overhead view of the debris field that had been Panchaea and the grid overlay on the viewscreen in the main bay of the VTOL he and his six person team were grouped into. "The World Health Organisation continues to declare this site off-limits to anyone but authorised recovery teams - so that means us. Anyone else found to be on-site who is unauthorised is to be contained, questioned, and neutralised." The man gestured in front of the screen and the image changed, revealing photos of a number of objects - and a few faces. "Our objectives are as follows. We are to try to recover, if possible, these items and individuals." The team watched quietly and intently as their leader spoke. "First is the Hyron Project computer." The man touched the bottom right corner of the image of the massive computer that relied on human 'drones' as a part of its makeup "We expect to find this on the seabed as that's the level it was at prior to the collapse of the installation." A few of the team members nodded, but none spoke up. They were all familiar with the Hyron Project to some degree and understood the need to recover it. "Barring the ability to recover the whole thing, as much of it, or at least the server databases that can be recovered are desired. The more, the better."

The leader, a man named Gregor Sloan, did not wait for comment and moved on to the next item "There were some labs on level 2A that housed some experimental augmentation technology. We've been asked to locate this, or the associated schematics from the lab computer databases if possible." The Sloan zoomed in on a blurry picture of some augmentation schematics from Tai Yong.

"Do they actually think we'd find that, Sir?" piped up a young woman with a thick Irish accent, short platinum hair, augmented eyes that seemed to almost glow orange, and an augmented arm that looked like liquid metal.

"They expect you to find something, Callaghan." Sloan replied, "The actual paper blueprints? I don't think we'd be that lucky and my guess is they are destroyed. The digital copies or even a stray limb? Well..." he trailed off. The woman pulled an unsatisfied frown but said nothing further to her superior.

"Next, they are looking for three individuals" A swipe across the screen brought up a picture of the founder of augmentation technology. "Hugh Darrow." Swipe. A picture of the leader of Humanity Front, "William Taggart." Pause. "Neither of them were found during the rescue operation. Both are presumed dead but the bosses want their remains if they can be found." Swipe. A picture of an angular face, punctuated by eye shield augs on either side of a pair of Sarif Industries augmented eyes and rather serious expression, a long straight nose, and finished off by an immaculately groomed beard. "And lastly this man who our counterparts ran into. He's the head of physical security for Sarif Industries. He survived our original asset acquisition from them, and that led to over half his body being augmented with the best that Sarif had. He should be considered armed and extremely dangerous if found. The name is Adam Jensen."

"Wouldn't he be expected to be dead like Darrow and Taggart?" A young man on the team with the discreet lines on his skull indicating neural augs and one augged eye asked as he scrutinised the picture of the man before them all.

Sloan let out a noisy breath "Not necessarily, Waters. The extensive augmentation that Jensen had, and the type of augmentation, suggest that there is a possibility he could survive this - he has a Sentinel RX implant and a rebreather, all fully upgraded to mil-spec, to work alongside his wet drive to keep him ticking if it's clever enough. Not necessarily conscious, but still alive." Sloan shrugged, "And orders are to bring him in - or what remains of him - regardless. The bosses seem particularly interested in him, so he's a priority along with Hyron."

Other members of the strike force mumbled and nodded to each other and themselves and a brief lull fell over the group - men and women whose names and faces had been forgotten to all except for those outside the squad and whose bodies had been transformed in the crucible of the past to become a tool of those who would seek to guide the future. 

A disembodied voice crackled over the comms, "Ten minutes to arrival at mobile base." it announced.

"Right, when we land we unload our gear, you have two hours to sleep, eat, do whatever you need to, and then at 0400 we'll gather, hand out assignments, and begin our recovery operation." Sloan concluded, walking back down between the two rows of his subordinates to take his seat along side them.


	3. Chapter 3

The sky was inky black splashed with countless pale twinkling stars and a thin band of aurora borealis shimmered high up overhead. The strike crew stood on the deck of their mobile operations base; a large WHO research vessel stationed near the epicentre of what had been Panchaea and was now the ever changing debris field of icy black water that took its place. 

"Teams of two, normal pairs." Sloan's voice was raised against the sound of the brisk wind and waves licking at the hull of the boat. "Team one, you're on Hyron. Forward sub and ROV are yours. Team two, you're on Adam Jensen. Aft sub and ROV are yours. Team three, you're on Darrow and Taggart, with general asset recovery. There's a zodiac with ROV that's yours. I will be in OPS. Stay in communication. Questions?"

A chorus of 'no Sir's was the reply, and with a nod of acknowledgement Sloan turned to retreat into the wheelhouse of the vessel while team members dispersed to their assigned locations.

For team two, the platinum haired young woman, Mairin Callaghan, and a hulking man, Tor Skjeggestad, with a dour expression and some industrial looking arm augments, that meant heading to the aft of the vessel. The two of them walked briskly in that direction. "So you think we will find this guy? Do you think he actually survived?" Callaghan asked. 

Skjeggestad shrugged "If he is as much machine as we were told then, maybe? ...but it doesn't matter. If we can find any part of him they want it."

Neither asked why and neither really wanted to know.

The two operatives reached the aft sub. It was small but the both of them could fit comfortably enough. They climbed in and Callaghan took the helm and deftly brought the cockpit of the sub to life and initiated the launch sequence. "Yeah, well, we will see what we can find down there, Tor. Last ping of his GPL that was scraped says he was way down by the Hyron central core in a server room or something."

"Broadcast room." Skleggestad corrected. The sub was in the ocean now and beginning to submerge, the dark waters sliding up around the small portals on the vessel. Tor got himself comfortable in the small jumper seat he had taken up as his own for the duration of this mission and he pulled a small disk-like object and an ebook from a pouch hanging on his thigh. He placed them both on the small built-in work surface in front of him and pressed a small button on the disk. With a hum a 3D image sprang to life of the lower levels of Panchaea.

The radio crackled to life "Team two, status?"

"We're on descent to target's last known location."

"Copy that. Good hunting."

The submersible took some time to make its descent. A few minutes after breaking the surface and heading down a huge twisted skeleton, the bulk of the remains of the Panchaea structure, came into sight in the powerful spotlight of the vehicle. Callaghan let out a low whistle but said nothing, continuing to carefully maneuver the sub downwards. 

"Five hundred metres to target's last known." Skjeggestad eventually said some minutes later. "Prepping ROV." He pulled the keyboard of the workstation near him closer and began typing intently, occasionally pausing to glance up at the display monitors around him in the small space. 

"Three hundred metres." Callaghan reported as she adjusted the speed of the sub. The seabed was visible now, a gray field of debris that surrounded the massive contorted base of the Panchaea structure and stretched out into the dark beyond. "One hundred" She updated, then after a moment she radioed in to the base ship and Sloan "This is team two, we are at target's last known location. Preparing to commence search."

"Base ship copies."

The giant twisting metal wall of what had been Panchaea loomed before the small sub, it's spotlight doing what it could to illuminate the vast structure. Before the small vehicle and its two occupants a giant rift was torn in the side of the metal wall of the structure leading in to inky blackness. To one side, the broadcast relay cabling snaked up the side of the distorted metal before disappearing into the dark ocean above the search team. Occasionally, bits of debris floated through the water, carried by the invisible currents to unknown destinations. 

"Ok Skjeggestad, launch the ROV. I'm going to try to ping this guy's GPL."

Tor nodded, grabbing hold of a control stick and hitting a few keys on the keyboard. The small ROV that was a companion to the submersible shot forward towards the dark entrance to the wreckage before them. Skjeggestad steered it deftly through the twisted forest of debris leading up to the opening; scanning the area about the small remote craft as he went. "Going in." he stated as the ROV disappeared from view into the darkness.


End file.
